From the start, the Bush Administration did everything possible to hamper the 9/11 Commission, opposing its creation altogether and then, after authorizing it under pressure, appointing housebroken Henry Kissinger to head it until public outcry made them back off.
Today the chairman, former Republican Governor Tom Kean, and vice chairman Lee Hamilton in a New York Times OpEd review the CIA's and the White House's efforts to deny the Commission access to or even knowledge of the tapes that recorded Al Qaeda interrogations and, stopping just short of calling their actions illegal, characterize the process as "obstruction."
This only confirms what veteran White House reporter Helen Thomas in 2003 described as a "stonewall" of "public pledges of cordial cooperation with investigators, followed by private resistance, delay, excuses, partial compliance or self-righteous assertion of constitutional prerogatives."
The Commission, as Kean and Hamilton make clear, was not authorized to judge whether or not torture was involved in the questioning but had a critical need to learn what the senior Al Qaeda operatives knew. Apparently while trying to hide their methods, the CIA and White House denied them that information.
The more we learn, the worse it gets.
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Do you think impeachment is inevitable?
We can not allow leaders to break the law with impunity - no matter how unpleasant and expensive the process will become. If we are a constitutional government, then we are compelled to follow the rule of law.
What are we if we choose to ignore these illegalities?
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